Read Before You Flag
Hi All, friendly neighborhood site admin here. I wanted to take a
minute to talk to you about the wonderful world of flagging posts. If
you need clarification on if something should be flagged or not, don't
hesitate to @ or PM myself or any other site admin.
What is Flagging?
Flagging
is what we call clicking the little grey flag at the bottom right of a
post. Clicking that button will send a copy of the post to a site admin
for them to see and act on.
What Should I Flag?
1) Comments that break the ToU. You can read it here. Generally, Section 4 is what defines the kind of user generated posts we will take action against.
2) A comment that promotes racism, hatred or physical harm of any kind against any group or individual.
It's in the ToU, but bears repeating. But keep in mind reasonable
intent. If we banned every comment that offended anyone, there would be
no meaningful dialogue on the site. That said, go ahead and flag the
post if you believe it does meet this criteria. There won't be any
repercussions if we don't agree, and feel free to message us if it stays
up more than a day and you feel strongly that it shouldn't.
3) Spam.
Posts advertising locksmithing, illegal downloads, garage door repair,
cremation (yep, seen some of those), plumbing services, making money
from home, giant blocks of repeated Korean text, and anything else that
looks obviously spam. We'll take care of it.
4) Trolling.
Keep in mind that someone saying something stupid every once in a while
or making the occasional annoying post is not trolling, provided they
do generally contribute. However, if they make it a pattern, flag
several of the offending posts at the same time, and ping myself or
another admin with the details.
5) Harassment.
This is hard to define, but generally falls under the umbrella of
repeated, unwanted messages, tags, journal comments, or forum posts. Two
caveats: First, the victim must have made it clear in the past that the
harasser's behavior is unwelcome. Second, harassment must be a repeated
set of behaviors. A single off color or uncomfortable remark does not
constitute harassment. Multiple, or continuing comments after being
asked to stop does.
6) Any post that breaks the site.
Whether by accident or malice, there have been posts in the past that
cause major formatting problems on the site. Flag them and we'll do our
best to get them sorted out.
7) Posts about unauthorized locations hosting RT content.
The long and short of it is that RT is a business. They don't look
kindly on people posting instructions on how to steal revenue from them.
That said, RT is generally aware of where and when illegal copies of
its work are posted to sharing sites. While the sentiment is
appreciated, we don't need you to hunt them down for us.
What Should I NOT Flag?
1) Posts disagreeing with you.
Don't like who a person is voting for? Does someone's fan fiction clash
with yours? Are they maintaining that their theory is right despite you
posting half a dozen sources saying they're wrong? That's nice, but
it's not going to result in any action, so don't flag it.
2) Spoilers.
Except in very certain circumstances, we're not going to delete posts
with spoilers. Especially if they're comments on the video that they
spoil. Protip: you shouldn't read those comments until after you watch
the video. Note, the exception is if someone is deliberately trying to
spoil something, in which case go ahead and flag it.
3) Posts criticizing RT or Their Content. They're big boys and girls. They don't care about posts saying "This video is trash" or "I hate X". So please, don't flag them
4) Something you want RT to see.
Your fan fiction/script/art project might be next big thing. We admins
certainly think so. And then we're going to ignore that flag and move
on. Try pinging the staff on Twitter or making a post on Reddit about it
instead.
5) Complaints or suggestions about the site or shows. If you have a problem with a bug, the site layout, show scheduling,
or anything else along those lines, please don't write a post and flag
it. Staff or someone with the power to change things won't see it. Just
us admins. You can report bugs here.
